Gift shop blaze threatens LA’s most enigmatic museum

Los Angeles’ Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT) is still coming to terms after a fire broke out late one night earlier this month. The blaze, which started on July 8, destroyed the museum’s gift shop and spread smoke damage throughout other areas of the building. Revenue losses during the museum’s closure are expected to total around $75,000. It is hoped the museum can reopen at some point next month.

LA Cultural Institution in Culver City

The Museum of Jurassic Technology has a somewhat cult following in the Los Angeles area. It opened in Culver City in 1988 and has been run by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Drake Wilson since. It bills itself as “dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic.” In reality, however, most of its offerings have little to do with the era in question. Instead, the MJT takes its inspiration from the old wunderkammers—also known as cabinets of curiosity—that were an early form of the museum, dating back to the Renaissance.

Permanent Exhibits and Inquiries into Curiousness

Over the years, the Museum of Jurassic Technology has built up a small cult following for its approach to curation and presentation of exhibits. While some displays use genuine historical artifacts and specimens, others are a seamless mixture of fact and fiction. Many visitors are often not sure what is true and what isn’t. One permanent display, for instance, documents the work of Athanasius Kircher, a genuine 17th-century polymath and Jesuit priest who had a real and encyclopedic interest in everything. Another permanent display celebrates the tiny, ultra-miniature sculptures of Armenian-American artist Hagop Sandaldjian, which are so small they sit inside the eye of a needle. The material used for the sculptures is also rather interesting, as each one is sculpted from a single human hair.

Deliberately Puzzling Offerings

The museum also has displays that are even more off-kilter. One of them contains a collection of decomposing dice that were once owned by magician Ricky Jay. Another room, titled “The Garden of Eden on Wheels,” documents trailer parks in and around Los Angeles from a visual perspective. Other exhibits include stereographic radiographs of flowers, microscopic mosaics made from butterfly wing scales, and a collection of letters written by amateur astronomers to the Mount Wilson Observatory from 1915 to 1935. The museum has also contained a Russian tea room in its basement since 2005, a replica of Tsar Nicholas II’s study at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.

Fire and Recovery

Writer Lawrence Weschler first broke the story of the fire, whose July 8 events are detailed in his online article. The fire was first noticed by MJT founder David Wilson, who lives in a residence located directly behind the museum. Wilson, who had a clear view of the museum through the windows of his home, noticed the flames and ran outside, carrying two fire extinguishers. He described the “ferocious column of flame” he encountered as the fire had climbed up the corner of the building that faces the street.

However, the extinguishers he was carrying were not large enough to battle the blaze, and it continued to spread. Wilson’s daughter and son-in-law then arrived, and, fortunately, they had a bigger extinguisher and were able to put the fire out before the firefighters arrived. The firefighters said that, had they arrived only a minute later, they would have likely lost the entire building.

Smoke Damage and Clean-Up

The structural damage was mostly localized to the gift shop area. However, the smoke from the blaze spread throughout the building. Wilson later compared the smoke damage to “a thin creamy brown liquid, evenly poured over all the surfaces—the walls, the vitrines, the ceiling, the carpets, and eyepieces, everything.” Smoke infiltration like that can be a significant problem, especially for a facility that has made a name for itself on presentation and meticulous detail. The MJT staff and volunteers have since been working tirelessly to clean up and restore the museum, a process they describe as slow and backbreaking.

In the meantime, Weschler has called for patrons to support the museum by donating to its general fund to cover revenue losses and help with the clean-up. He stated that the MJT is “one of the most truly sublime institutions in the country” and a place that “occupies a rarefied space that transcends any simple definition of science or art or story.”

While the museum does not yet have a confirmed reopening date, it is hoped that it will be able to return to its curious ways soon.